Stanford Eliminates Tuition for Lower & Middle-Class Families

I normally post about technology and how it makes life better. This might be a bit of a stretch. But when I got this in my inbox this morning (and realized that I haven't written a post for a while), I decided that this made a nice topic.

Under the new program, parents with incomes of less than $100,000 will no longer pay tuition. Parents with incomes of less than $60,000 will not be expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board and other expenses.

This follows on the heels of similar announcements by Harvard. It's a fantastic thing to be able have the kind of endowment to completely do away with tuition for those who can't afford it.

So how does technology play a role in this? While the endowment is certainly a well-managed, well-diversified portfolio, Stanford's role in building the Silicon Valley has also helped tremendously. Many of the Valley's innovations have come from students doing research at Stanford, and the school does benefit financially when the innovations turn into successes. You don't have to look very far: Google, Sun, Cisco, and Yahoo are all companies built by students coming out of the school. With Google, Stanford owned about $250 M in GOOG stock - at the IPO price.

So it's not hard to see how much technology is going to be helping many young freshmen over the next several years.

More on this:

• The Stanford Daily
• SF Chronicle
• Stanford's Tech Investments: Stanford Daily, USA Today, WSJ